In 2010, the Supreme Court overturned the ban on corporate election spending in the landmark Citizens United case. As a majority of the justices considered political spending to be a form of free speech, corporations were free to ‘speak’, with the goal to persuade the voting public, through political contributions. Since then, the amount of money spent in elections has grown drastically, and the source of that money has become a key concern for many Americans. Many have become to wonder, with so much money involved, could our elections simply be ‘bought’?

Voter turnout in many city elections is hitting all-time lows. There is no single reason for such declines, evidence strongly suggests ranked choice voting (RCV) does not lead to lower turnout despite some claims to the contrary. Indeed, adoption of RCV has allowed cities to avoid primary and runoff elections that almost always had far lower turnout than the general election.

In the 2016 U.S. House election, Jim Bridenstine (OK-1) won reelection in a race with just 62,655 votes cast (or 8.1% of the district’s 2010 census population). Meanwhile, Ryan Zinke (MT) won his 2016 re-election bid with more than 507,000 votes cast, and earned more than five times as many votes as Bridenstein on his way to a victory that was (relatively) close. How can this be?

This year, there are 18 states with bills advancing ranked choice voting. Ranked choice voting’s ability to both make election cycles more efficient and level the playing field for all candidates and parties makes it popular across the political spectrum. This is reflected in the balanced support that ranked choice voting receives for a range of uses from Republican and Democratic state legislators.

What can we learn from our near miss with the absurd world of election irregularities? For one thing, while these situations worry some academics who study election systems, we have little evidence that they happen in practice.

On March 2, 2017, Northern Ireland’s citizens will cast their votes for Members of the country’s sixth Legislative Assembly. In this election, the country’s heavily Protestant Democratic Union Party (DUP), which holds 37 of the 108 seats, will face off with the Irish nationalist Sinn Fein Party (28 seats) for influence over the Assembly’s legislative agenda.

Utah politicians and activists have long debated changes to how political parties nominate candidates. There is hope that both legislators and election administrators can come together around ranked choice voting as the solution. Representative Rebecca Chavez-Houck has filed HB 349, to use ranked choice voting in primary and general elections.